Fresh Air

Monday through Thursday at Noon on WMRA, and Weeknights at 6pm on WEMC
Terry Gross

Fresh Air opens the window on contemporary arts and issues with guests from worlds as diverse as literature and economics.

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Remembrances
10:01 am
Fri April 20, 2012

Levon Helm: The 2007 Fresh Air Interview

Credit Rob Loud / Getty Images
Levon Helm was the longtime drummer and occasional vocalist for The Band.

Originally published on Fri April 20, 2012 3:37 pm

Levon Helm, the longtime drummer of The Band who backed Bob Dylan and sang with Van Morrison, died Thursday after a lengthy battle with cancer. He was 71.

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Music Reviews
11:04 am
Thu April 19, 2012

From Dominican Roots, Bachata Is Here To Stay

Credit Alicia Santistevan
Joan Soriano.

Originally published on Thu April 19, 2012 11:39 am

Movie Interviews
11:01 am
Thu April 19, 2012

The Stooges Are Back, And Nyuk-ing Things Up Again

Originally published on Thu April 19, 2012 12:11 pm

The Farrelly brothers have long been known for their gross-out humor and their shocking comedies. After writing and directing movies like Dumb and Dumber, Kingpin, There's Something About Mary and Shallow Hal -- where agreeable idiots get caught up in all sorts of trouble — Peter and Bobby Farrelly decided to tackle another set of goofy doofuses: The Three Stooges.

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Animals
10:31 am
Thu April 19, 2012

Following The Lives Of Chimpanzees On Screen

Originally published on Thu April 19, 2012 11:49 am

The new Disneynature film Chimpanzee started off the way most movies do. Co-producers and directors Mark Linfield and Alastair Fothergill, who had previously worked together on the documentary film Earth, approached Disney with a 70-page script about a group of chimpanzees living in Western Africa. There was just one problem: Chimps don't take direction — or read scripts.

So Fothergill and Linfield teased out a narrative from more than three years' worth of footage they took in Western Africa while observing a large clan of chimpanzees.

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Movie Reviews
12:36 pm
Wed April 18, 2012

In 'Monsieur Lazhar,' Grief Lingers In The Classroom

Credit Music Box Films
Fellag, an Algerian comedian, plays the title character in the Oscar-nominated Monsieur Lazhar, who steps in to teach a class of middle school students after tragedy has struck their classroom.

Teacher movies tend to be more alike than unalike, but Monsieur Lazhar makes the familiar unusually strange. The note on which it opens is shocking, tragic: A Montreal middle school student, Simon, enters his classroom ahead of the other kids and finds his teacher hanging from a pipe, dead by her own hand.

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Music Reviews
10:46 am
Wed April 18, 2012

Jenny Scheinman's 'Mayhem' Hard To Pin Down

Credit Michael Gross
Jenny Scheinman's (left) quartet represents players raised on and used to playing all kinds of music.

Originally published on Wed April 18, 2012 12:24 pm

Violinist Jenny Scheinman's band and new album are both called Mischief and Mayhem. The record was made just after her quartet played a week at the Village Vanguard, but despite the jazz cred of regular Vanguard appearances, their stylistically fluid music draws on a lot of traditions.

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Health
12:37 pm
Tue April 17, 2012

The Race To Create The Best Antiviral Drugs

Originally published on Tue April 17, 2012 3:42 pm

If you've ever had a bacterial infection like staph or strep throat, your doctor may have prescribed penicillin. But if you've had the flu or a common cold virus, penicillin won't work. That's because antibacterials only kill bacteria, and both the flu and the common cold are viruses. So for illnesses like the flu, doctors prescribe antiviral drugs, which target the mechanisms that viruses use to reproduce.

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Music Interviews
12:22 pm
Tue April 17, 2012

The Jazz Drummer Who Makes Music Out Of Everything

Originally published on Tue April 17, 2012 3:04 pm

Music Reviews
11:41 am
Mon April 16, 2012

Loudon Wainwright III Looks Back At His 'Old Man'

As Loudon Wainwright III says in his song "In C," he likes to sing about "my favorite protagonist — me."

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Religion
11:26 am
Mon April 16, 2012

Interpreting Shariah Law Across The Centuries

Sadakat Kadri is an English barrister, a Muslim by birth and a historian. His first book, The Trial, was an extensive survey of the Western criminal judicial system, detailing more than 4,000 years of courtroom antics.

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